A Closer Look At Family Settings and New Tools for Cross-Play Available Now

Parents have a lot of tools and options to take advantage of when it comes to managing their child's account on Xbox Live. In this day and age, a lot of control is needed with gaming in general being more popular than ever and with youngsters being exposed to the online world of games that can be full of not-so-sensible gamers. If you're not aware of the options available to you on Xbox, then take a look at the details on how you can use the many different tools on offer to your advantage.

Screen time management: Parents can set time limits and view activity reports to keep on top of their children’s activity. Limits can be set for each day of the week, meaning parents can restrict gaming on school nights or allow more time over the weekend.

Purchase limits: Parents can choose to approve children’s purchases before they are made, to receive alerts after each purchase, or to set up an allowance to limit purchases children can make on their own.

Content filters: Parents can filter or allow games, apps and websites based on the age of their children to ensure they are interacting with age-appropriate content. Children can also request access to content which parents can then approve or decline.

Privacy: Parents can set what people see about their child’s online profile, status and gaming history and who they can communicate with online. This is especially valuable with the increasing popularity of multiplayer games where users can interact with other players around the world. These settings can be managed via the parent’s Microsoft account at xbox.com/Settings.

Children also have the opportunity to play online games versus others thanks to cross-network enable games. Fortnite is the first title to include such a feature and parents and carers will have more tools to manage cross-network play for their kids and youngsters on Xbox. Two new settings will be available to turn on or off, allowing those in control to allow or block both cross-network play and cross-network communication for their child's account.

Not all aspects of gaming fun come down to just the parents. The kids will also be able to play a role in learning their digital habits thanks to an activity report that they can view so that they can also be aware of things such as screen time limits and gaming habits. The kids can also request extensions to their time on console or PC which the parents can approve or decline. There's also the Ask a parent feature available to use where kids can ask for permission to make app or game purchases, and request access to websites, apps, or games.

Assistant News Manager for TrueAchievements and member of the Newshounds team since 2010. Lover of completions, tough achievements, shooters, action, adventure and racing titles, hip-hop, Wu-Tang, NBA, and my Scooby. I can be found working on the never-ending backlog which you can see my progress on via my TA blog.

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